DCAM: Synth Squad underrated?

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I really like using Fusor for layered, sequenced sounds, like the following one. Fusor's Animator is great fun and very addictive.

A nod to hardware modular noodling:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3B-A1hycXk
http://www.electric-himalaya.com
VSTi and hardware synth sound design
3D/5D sound design since 2012

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DCAM: Synth Squad underrated?
i'm agree, consumers need more tutorials,
Strobe need a phase reset(i know the original dont have any reset...., but for bass...)
and you have some annoying bugs BUT the sound is Wonderfull, i use Strobe for is unisson and the filter is a beast, at min 2x oversampling.....
thanks to AiynZahevSounds for his tutorial and
Monsieur electric-himalaya for his amazing presets.

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it doesn't have a cool name like "Serum" or "Codex" :smack:
HW SYNTHS [KORG T2EX - AKAI AX80 - YAMAHA SY77 - ENSONIQ VFX]
HW MODULES [OBi M1000 - ROLAND MKS-50 - ROLAND JV880 - KURZ 1000PX]
SW [CHARLATAN - OBXD - OXE - ELEKTRO - MICROTERA - M1 - SURGE - RMiV]
DAW [ENERGY XT2/1U RACK WINXP / MAUDIO 1010LT PCI]

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kokotte wrote:DCAM: Synth Squad underrated?
i'm agree, consumers need more tutorials,
Strobe need a phase reset(i know the original dont have any reset...., but for bass...)
and you have some annoying bugs BUT the sound is Wonderfull, i use Strobe for is unisson and the filter is a beast, at min 2x oversampling.....
thanks to AiynZahevSounds for his tutorial and
Monsieur electric-himalaya for his amazing presets.
I totally forgot about that video!

It might be relevant:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEQmoQJXk80
Aiynzahev-sounds
Sound Designer - Soundsets for Pigments, Repro, Diva, Virus TI, Nord Lead 4, Serum, DUNE2, Spire, and others

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This account is dormant, I am no longer employed by FXpansion / ROLI.

Find me on LinkedIn or elsewhere if you need to get in touch.

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cron wrote:Underrated to my mind too. Cypher has a deeply annoying bug which causes modulation amounts to significantly differ across oversampling settings; stable tones can change into beating, or just plain inharmonic ones after switching to a different oversampling rate (when using the presets, I wonder which oversampling setting is the 'right' one).

I just bought Synth Squad.

I didn't know about this bug. Might not have purchased, since one of Synth Squad's key features is being able to render at a super high sample rate.

It must be something they are unable to fix?

Do you know specifically which modulation settings are affected?

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They are working on an update. Hopefully things like this will be addressed.

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I don't think that these are underrated, they are good synths that sound great and had 'a lot' of hype and discussion when they came out. However not sure that they ever got as much use from people as they should have.

In no particular order:
-Modulation powerful but not as intuitive as it could be.
-small gui
-Dreadfully small number of presets.
-presets only available from fxpansion and $$$
-fxpansion have a very poor record on bug fixes, updates or making any free small -improvements after a release
-pretty cpu heavy
-presets generally high gain/drive and showing limited range of synths sounds
-some people couldn't work out cypher/amber

I think the total combination of the above made these generally under utilised. Very few youtube videos as a result, beyond the fxpansion tutorials...

I hope they fix all of the above image in SS2. For me a more friendly gui is what I'd like see. New one looks good and hope it also plays well!

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mike the mental wrote:
cron wrote:Underrated to my mind too. Cypher has a deeply annoying bug which causes modulation amounts to significantly differ across oversampling settings; stable tones can change into beating, or just plain inharmonic ones after switching to a different oversampling rate (when using the presets, I wonder which oversampling setting is the 'right' one).

I just bought Synth Squad.

I didn't know about this bug. Might not have purchased, since one of Synth Squad's key features is being able to render at a super high sample rate.

It must be something they are unable to fix?

Do you know specifically which modulation settings are affected?
I've only noticed it in Cypher, specifically when doing frequency modulation, using one oscillator to modulate another with the dedicated FM/WM controls found on the lower left corner of oscs 2 and 3. Not modulation as in the Transmod system (LFOs and such). It's only really noticeable if you're using FM to achieve complex, but stable tones.

When I reported this on the FXpansion forum a while back, Angus informed me it was due to accumulated rounding error and they had an internal build of the synth with a full 64 bit audio path that didn't exhibit this behaviour, at the cost of higher CPU. I've no idea if said internal build was an early incarnation of Cypher 2 as it was a while back, but who knows.

Either way I'm confident you won't regret your purchase. It's a stunning collection once you dig below the surface. I've started using unison to 'modulate' osc sync in Cypher, tuning it to get a ton of different harmonic sync factors in my unison stacks. Immense! Such a deep collection. Tweakhead heaven.
Last edited by cron on Wed Jan 28, 2015 10:20 am, edited 2 times in total.

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I just bought Synth Squad.

I didn't know about this bug. Might not have purchased, since one of Synth Squad's key features is being able to render at a super high sample rate.

It must be something they are unable to fix?

Do you know specifically which modulation settings are affected?
As leras_ says, it specifically relates to the beat frequencies between oscillators in Cypher. There are very subtle variations in tuning drift between the different sample rates, but if you make a sound relying on the beat frequency between two Cypher oscillators, in a few specific situations it will sound different depending on sample rate.

There is a way to fix, I tried it, it turned out to be prohibitively CPU expensive in SS1. Not a good trade-off (in the Cypher v1 oscillator, which is already quite CPU heavy!) for the small number of patches affected.
-small gui
Scalable as of v1.2 (albeit with some artifacts, as based on standard definition bitmap images).
-Dreadfully small number of presets.
Around 1500 across Synth Squad as a whole. Most single synths in the $150-200 class (Lush101, Dune2 etc.) seem to come with 500-1000, so that's comparable, no?
-presets only available from fxpansion and $$$
Not true, there are quite a few third party sound sets.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=synth+squad+presets

.. however we tend to sell the best of them, because we can reach all the users with newsletters etc., and some people prefer to buy from somewhere they already have a relationship with.
-fxpansion have a very poor record on bug fixes, updates or making any free small -improvements after a release
??? you got CPU optimizations, 64-bit, AAX, scalable GUI all for free.
This account is dormant, I am no longer employed by FXpansion / ROLI.

Find me on LinkedIn or elsewhere if you need to get in touch.

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Those were just my thoughts on why it may not have reached the popularity of say Massive, despite the fact that it sounds as good if not better in some cases. (My only metric being an unscientific finger in the air feel of how many youtube videos there are).

I'm glad you corrected me on some of the points.

Re: presets there are indeed more now than when it was first released, my memory is slanted by the first impressions a bit. Also maybe I didn't get all of them!

Re: improvements. 64 bit aax etc are more essentials than improvement. Improvement would be along the lines of new oscillators/filters. I think fx seem, to me at least, to always release a good product, but major improvements wait for the next version!

I.e. tremor, a great 1.5 update, probably as much for a marketing refresh, could be to add a very simple sample slot, and perhaps a limited purely bd synthesis mode as alternatives to the single synthesis mode.

Also please bear in mind incase i wasn't clear that I really do like all three synths, and these comments really are aimed at why haven't these gone on to be discussed as widely as say Massive.... as opposed to just being plain critical. Really can't wait for v2.

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I was thinking to buy couple times, but:
1. I don't like modulation UI
2. Price is too high (I have no time to track sales)
3. I more like sound of tal 101
Murderous duck!

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The sound is gorgeous, but gui is confusing and modulation is atrocious (sorry), because you have to take a learning course to understand it. Every time i hear how the synths sound i tempted to get, when i actually want to make something with it...eh that GUI.

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themachinelt wrote:The sound is gorgeous, but gui is confusing and modulation is atrocious (sorry), because you have to take a learning course to understand it. Every time i hear how the synths sound i tempted to get, when i actually want to make something with it...eh that GUI.
I think the mod system is one of the best around. Easy to understand, easy to implement (no mod matrix, hallelujah). The GUI isn't very pretty (ymmv), but the layout is crystal-clear and far from confusing. To my mind, at least.

Some people latch onto things more quickly than others, depending on so many factors. It's probably pretty hard for developers to correctly assess the validity of feedback, not to mention acting upon it. How far are you willing to compromise your vision, and how much time and effort are you willing to spend in a futile attempt to make everyone happy?

Underrated is probably not the right word, because it was rated highly in most reviews I read, and many users obviously really like it. Synth Squad didn't seem to inspire a loyal "cult" following like some other synths, though. Why that is is anybody's guess. My personal guess is: the three-synth-split paradigm, Fusor is a little daunting to get into, no sexy GUI, and CPU usage (which is kind of moot nowadays).

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Good post ariston.

The mod system, although not perfect, is very simple to use: select a source and then go to any knob or fader on the synth's GUI. This is such an intuitive way of interacting with modulation. Just modulate what you see on the GUI, rather than sift through a long list of destinations that would normally be presented in a mod matrix.

This invites experimentation since I no longer have to look for destinations in a list, but just simply go to any knob/fader I fancy. And since I can have an unlimited amount of destinations for any selected source, it paves the way for experimentation and some outlandish sounds, especially if all the audio-rate modulations are used (eg: oscillator frequency to anything else - this is in addition to the one-knob FM).

It seems that this system is slowly being taken up by other developers, as seen for example in Serum. Although, personally, I do not like systems that require drag+drop, since this gesture can be performed hundreds of times in an editing session, which just adds to RSI. With this action, my finger muscles always work, whereas the Synth Squad method is much more effortless. A small detail perhaps, but important in the context of long sound design sessions.
http://www.electric-himalaya.com
VSTi and hardware synth sound design
3D/5D sound design since 2012

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